Taglines:

• If you don’t treat Santa nice he’ll put you on ice.
• Ralphie has a present for you, a double barrel shot gun of death!
• Naughty…nice…It doesn’t matter…Ralphie’s the guy with the gun.
• Santa is belted, buckled, booted, and ready for action.
• A double dog dare you of death!

Synopsis

Ralphie is a CIA operative who has been working the mean streets of New York for nearly 9 years. His latest assignment is as an undercover mobster within a powerful cartel family called the Parkers. The cartel is run by an overbearing drunken father referred to as “The Old Man.” He’s been selling bunk cocaine from the trunk of his Oldsmobile while the mother, a struggling go-go dancer, sells her homemade stews on the street to help buy more mashed potatoes for the mute brother Randy, it’s the only food he can digest. Mr. Parker collects erotic memorabilia including a highly valuable leg sculpture he imported from the little known southern island of Fragile. It’s his most prized possession.

One brisk winter day, the sculpture gets destroyed in a lower east side drive by. An apparent attack by the Bumpuseses gang, a ruthless group of southern rednecks who have an affinity for training large rabid attack dogs. Mr. Parker however believes it was in an inside job and that he has a rat among his associates. Later that day Ralphie tries to extract some information about the drive-by from Scut Farkus, a freckled face yellow eyed physcopath who demands everyone call him “Uncle.” Dangerous and unpredictable, he wears a hat made of human scalps and will break the arm of anyone who even look at him crossed eyed.

Ralphie hopes to track down his red rider assault rifle which he believes was used in attack on the Parker’s home and could be traced back to him. He beats Scut Furkus senselessy in a back alley until Scut confesses that he’s just a low level henchman for a rich city pimp known as “Big Red.” Big Red is a Santa impersonator at the local mall but is a cover for his underground white slave trade and has an even bigger hatred for Mr. Parker than the city cops. When Ralphie and Randy show up at his headquarters, they get surprised with a trap door that sends them both plummeting to the city streets below where some elve henchmen beat them to a pulp. Battered and bruised, Ralphie finds help from a local teacher known for her strict rules and deathly assassin moves. A teacher and martial arts master so ruthless she is rumored to have nailed a student’s tongue to a flag pole just for him being disrespectful.

After a lengthy recovery and training, Ralphie receives a secret coded message over the radio  from agent Annie who’s been tracking him and his mission’s progress. Project “Drink Your Ovaltine” is a go for Christmas day as a big drug shipment disguised as kid’s chocolate drinks is heading up state. Upon return to the family, Ralphie cover is blown from a phoned-in tip from Flick, a fellow mobster who suspected he might be a cop when he witnessed him talking into his secret decoder ring. Held prisoner at the Parker home Ralphie endures a series of tortures including being gagged with soap and forced to wear a pink bunny suit all for the amusement of the cartel. At his darkest hour a mysterious package arrives at the door bearing a tag that reads “A gift from Santa.” Inside is his red-rider assault rifle loaded and ready for action. He breaks free, grabs the gun and takes out the guards with extreme prejudice. Escaping through a broken window and nearly losing his eye in the process he drives  away in the family’s Oldsmobile. Flat tire and cursing under his breath he eventually makes his way to Chinatown and finds refuge as a fry cook in a small Chinese restaurant. Ralphie now in federal protection, hopes to never be found by the Parkers who want his head on a platter. From that day on the eye patched operative must always watch over his shoulders as the last words from Mr. Parker still haunt him… “Not a finger!” “Not a finger!”

Merry Christmas..Can you dig it suckas?

“Here’s a dollar…go buy yourself a bucket of shirts.”

I never haver really understood the appeal of fine jewelry. Women swoon over a pretty diamond perched on a gold ring or a silver necklace covered in precious stones but couldn’t the same look be accomplished with colored glass and metallic spray paint? The obsession kicks into an estrogen overdrive when a gal shows her friends her new engagement ring. You’d think she just won the Super-Bowl. “Ooooh..look how big the diamond is!” They drool over it’s shininess like Golum in Lord of the Rings. It’s a totally different experience for us guys. When we get our wedding band we fiddle with it,  place it on the soap holder in the shower precariously over the drain or spin it on the table just to see how long it will spin…right before it accidentally goes down the heating vent. We grudgingly buy you jewelry because we know you love it and hopefully it’s fair compensation for the dumb things we have done in the past and will continue to do over the course of the marriage. If given the choice though, we’d probably pawn it and buy something more practical that makes clicky electronic noises or has blinky lights. Give me a nice lazyboy chair with a built in fridge and remote…now see that’s something useful, or how about a 6 foot tall stuffed monkey wearing a beanie hat hold a serving tray. That would go great in the living room next to that fine china cabinet and really isn’t it just as practical? Friends would come over to admire it and they would put their drinks on the serving tray and ask me “So where did you get this cool monkey?” I’d proudly respond “Well I almost bought something impractical like jewelry but ordered this instead, and check out these new usb-powered nose haired trimmers I got yesterday!” Oh Sharper Image catalogs, how I will miss thee.

Speaking of people obsessed with precious metals, The movie Leprechaun proves that you shouldn’t take gold from a midget with buckles on his shoes and that they also make the worse house guests. Leprechauns are regularly sited exiting bars on St. Patty’s day but only the mean ones likes to hang out in the backwoods of Arkansas. So when a drunk Irish redneck tricks one into giving him his bag of gold coins, Irish tempers flare and it unleashes an unholy revenge on him and his wife. With the gold prices going through the roof you can understand him being a bit peeved over the loss of his dublins. His pint-sized gold rush is cut short though when Mr. O’Grady shoots the little bugger with his handgun and then seals him in a storage crate protecting it with a 4-leaf clover. Sure, vampires melt in sunlight, werewolves die from silver bullets, but leprehauns have only to fear lawn weeds. Spring forward 10 years and a young Jennifer Aniston, pre-Friends, and her Billy Ray Cyrus looking dad show up to do some renovations on the dingy old O’Grady house accidentally breaking the clover-seal of freshness. Also working on the rennovation is a foul-mouthed kid named Nathan (nevermind those pesky child labor laws), his slow-witted friend Ozzie and a Kevin Bacon look alike who must have lost his shirt sleeves in a freak fan accident.

Nathan and Ozzie discover a hidden bag of gold after following a magic rainbow to an old rusty truck in the woods…also a likely place for my 401k savings. Upon taking the gold they find themselves having to defend the house against the blood thirsty leprechaun. He hides out in cereal cupboards, goes go-karting, rides pogo sticks, and antagonzing policeman. Are we sure this isn’t just a punk kid jacked up on Red Bull? Seemingly now indestructible after get slammed with 10 shot gun blasts to the chest he easily gets distracted by having dirty leather shoes tossed at his head. Leprecahuns are known to be obsessive shoe shiners so this distracts him long enough for Jennifer to escape for help in her Jeep. She attempts to track down Mr. O’Grady at retirement home to find out how to kill the leprechaun but gets ambushed by the evil dwarf incognito who tries to run her over in a pimped out wheelchair. Little known fact that Leprechaun’s upper body strength is like that of Arnold Swarzenneger. There’s a big showdown at the farmhouse where they  make a final stand against the malevolent Irishman while searching the lawn for 4 leaf clovers. It all comes down to a gorey conclusion by the hands of a mighty sling shot and a stick of bubble yum. A sort of anti-David and Goliath ending.

I had always been meaning to see this film and remember the VHS tape cover at my local video store along with it’s countless sequels but was never in the mood even on St. Patty’s day. I like my psychotic  killers above 3 feet tall (sorry Chucky.) It just didn’t seem like something that could be very scary and I was correct…Not scary but still entertaining. You gotta admire a Leprechaun that’s just so darn happy on his killing spree. The little guy takes pride in his job. Retroman Steve says check it out, you’ll never look at your Lucky Charms cereal the same way ever again. 

Roadside Attractions

- Extreme house shack makeover
- Pogo vault to the chest
- Obsessive shoe cleaning
- 1 Bear trap
- 3 Leprechaun tossings
- Leprechaun skate boarding
- Irish dwarf Skeet shooting
- Irish go-cartin’
- Eyeball gouging
- Clover pickin’
- Lucky charms of death
- Exploding wishing wells

rated 7.1 out of 10 for the movie

In case you have a unwanted leprechaun house guest  may I suggest offering him some Clover Leaf Flaked Light Spicy Thai Chili Tuna. It’s delicious. He’ll burst into flames and you won’t have the messy clean-up.

Check out the trailer for Leprechaun

“Who would stab this helpless wedge of cheese? A shameless cheese cutter?!!”

When I was a student designer in college, one of my required classes was sculpting. As a young illustrator I went in a bit cocky thinking that I could create the next masterpiece simply by closing my eyes and molding the clay into a work of perfection. Or maybe I could be like Patrick Swayze in the movie “Ghost” and show my lady my sensual fruit bowl making skills except without the whole getting shot and being stuck with Whoopi Golburg as my post-death translator. My sculptures actually looked a bit more like a deranged Gumby or a Mr. Bill on a good day (after he got ran over by the steamroller.) But I persevered in a sort of horrifying dedication to congealed mud expressionism. The only perk you’d get was the  occassional female nude models that would pose for the class. You’d think that would be a great opportunity for us horny college guys to gawk at some of the finest female figures higher education has to offer. Well, these ladies were getting paid student rates so at best you got a large burly women who believes in the “all natural” look. Something a economy tub of Nare will barely make a dent into. I learned quickly that I was no Michelangelo and my sculptures would take a turn for the worst in not studying the delicate features of Lumber Jack Janice. My sad attempt at fine art turned out to be more of unintentional abstract expressionism. “You see the one leg is longer that the other to represent woman’s plight in societial opression…errr.” “Uhhh…note how the face is lopsided…an obvious portrayal of humanities self reflection of it’s own inner turmoil…”  I never did end up wearing a beret or swilling wine at the latest art gallery opening but I did learn that clay is hard to clean out from under your fingernails and that if you’re going to get paid to be nude it better be at a bar with a 2 drink minimum.

Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) knows what it means to be a struggling artist. He works days as a bus boy at a beatnik bar/art gallery then at night likes to work a bit on his art career. He’s not the sharpest tool in tool shed though when he inadvertently stabs his land lady’s dimwitted cat who got stuck in his wall again. Consumed with a lack of talent and a deep hatred of PETA, he slaps some clay on the carcus and calls it art hoping to impress his beatnik peers. The owner of the gallery and fellow beatniks love his new masterpiece hailing him a genius and throwing him a party where they dress him up like a king and write him poems. It’s like his own personal reinassance fair. Everyone is excited to see his next piece completely unaware of it’s ghoulish creamy nugget center, so Walter starts offing people left and right to put together a quick exhibition. Also a benefit of becoming a murderous psychotic artist is you can finally wear that berret and gay neck scarf you’ve had your eye on. Walter’s sculpture range from “Undercover Police Guy I hit with frying pan” to “Naked bimbo I invited over and then choked the life out of her.” But probably his best piece is “Some dude working on a table saw in the alley that I decapitated.” It was not only his best piece but the easiest to transport and makes an excellent table center piece.

The gallery’s owner soon discovers Walter’s little secret but wimps out in not calling the police and instead just acts akward around Walter and sweats a lot. The big art exhibition starts off well until the guests start fiddling with the sculptures discovering the grisly secret under their surface. Did somebody forgot to put out the do not touch signs the night before? Meanwhile Walter has confessed his love for one of the beatnick chicks, Carla, and nothing says love more than involuntary taxidermy, but she “ain’t into that scene can you dig?” so Walter ends up chasing Carla and a angry mob ends up chasing Walter. Carla must have been training for a triathlon because Walter gives up the chase and tries to hide in his apartment…nobody will EVER think of looking for him there. The tragic and ironic ending only emphasis the evils of play-dough but is also a testament to incompetent gallery owners everywhere. 

Roger Corman wrote and directed this 50’s flick. The man is a machine whose been turning out films since the dawn of celluloid and truly is the king of b-movies. One of his tammer and shorter films but surprisingly entertaining with a bit of a hitchcock flavor to it. Retroman Steve says check it out and be sure to bring your pottery wheel.

Roadside Attractions

-1 frying pan to the head
-1 chick chokin’
- Cat-atonic
- Extreme neck scarves
- Orson Wells beatnik poets
- Corpse drop ceilings
- Beatnik civil war actors
- Play-dough of death
- Table saw decapitation

rated 7.3 out of 10 for the movie

“No clay was harmed in the filming of this movie. Well maybe except for Clay Aikens.”

Check out the trailer for A Bucket of Blood.